


Guilt in Your Eyes

by wisdomeagle



Category: Angel: the Series, Firefly
Genre: Crossover, F/F, Future Fic, Long Walks Along the Beach, Magic, Memories, Rescue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-07-22
Updated: 2005-07-22
Packaged: 2017-12-16 18:46:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,342
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/865371
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wisdomeagle/pseuds/wisdomeagle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Another way to get Fred to the future.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Guilt in Your Eyes

I looked at you, you had guilt in your eyes  
But it only lasted a little while. \-- Jill Sobule, "I Kissed a Girl"

Kaylee finds far stranger things than _this_ in Fred's trunks, piled high and close to walls in the cabin on the edge of the prairie, right where it comes close to the River Storra. Stranger things, and dearer, for their being secret. There are medallions and lockets, old and knotted kerchiefs and strange clothes that look like they belong in another world. When Kaylee asks Fred, she suddenly looks very serious, and her whole face wrinkles up, from forehead to chin, as she tries to remember. But Kaylee doesn't ask very often; she has so few hours here that they aren't worth wasting on asking questions that have no answers. Instead, they walk past the Storra, and that seems right, as that's where Kaylee first saw Fred, staring up at the sky and making little thoughtful, clicking sounds. "I'm watching the clouds," she said.

"See anything pretty?"

"It'll storm next week," said Fred.

"How can you know?"

"The clouds," Fred told her. "Water molecules are never good at keeping secrets."

The first thing Fred taught Kaylee was how to look at the sky, a hand on her arm, guiding her pointing finger till it just touched the edge of cirrus, wispy and evaporating to clear blue sky as they watched.

The banks of the Storra are the best place for finding flowers to twine around their arms and in their hair, and they always have two names for each bud. _Ambrosia artemisiifolia_ and Shen Nu Bi Xi, _Cuscuta gronovii_ and Spiny Heart. One of the many mysteries of Fred is where she learned her flower names; Kaylee knows hers from her mother and her grandma, and they know them from the time that was Before.

"Before?" Fred often doesn't know things that other folk do, making the quantity of odd things she does know triply impressive.

"'Fore there was the War, and all the flowers died on half the planets where the Browncoats came. That's _Before_."

"Oh." When Fred says the word her cheeks go hollow and her eyes have a thousand questions in them. Fred asks question upon question, and Kaylee never asks the one that's always on her mind: How did you come to be here?

This chest is full of papers, and the papers are covered in writing. Some of it's in English, and most of it's not; there are some words that look Chinese from a distance but when she looks closer, it's not Chinese at all. She knows Fred's watching her and tries not to be self-conscious as she removes one paper after another from the trunk and piles them around her. 

"Shouldn't you be getting home?" Fred is often insistent on this point. "Your folks will be worried about you -- I know I keep you later than I should, but it's nice -- it's nice to have someone to talk with. But your folks will worry; you've got to get home."

Kaylee glances towards the window -- the only real glass window she's seen not in town. "It won't be dark for nearly an hour. Can't I stay, please?"

"There's more papers in that one -- and that one -- and that one." Fred jabs her finger almost accusingly. "I don't know what you want with them. Some of them are my research notes, but most of it... most of it doesn't mean a thing to me." She can't go home now; this is the closest she's gotten to discovery. But Fred doesn't say anything else, and Kaylee turns back to struggling through the heavy stacks of paper that have Fred's secrets written on them in a language she doesn't understand. She would ask Fred; she _would_ , but the look in Fred's eyes is sadder than it's ever been. Kaylee picks up a piece of paper, stares at the words on it, puts it down again.

"Let's go walking."

"Let's!" The sadness vanishes quicker than Kaylee's eyes can follow; Fred jumps up and wraps a coat around herself, though it won't be truly cold for two more moon-cycles. Fred has a habit of shivering when most folks would be glad for the breeze. It's an oddity. Fred is all oddness in a world filled with motors and gears. Take them apart, and you're left with fragments, but together they make sense. The fragments of Fred -- her way of speaking and her boxes full of relics -- can't be put together right to make anyone Kaylee understands.

They walk along the Storra, which has dried almost to a trickle in the long summery heat. The banks are slick with mud, and since they walk near to the edge, Kaylee holds Fred's arm in hers to keep her from falling in. Fred's more silent than usual all the way to the fork, and she points them towards town, not their usual direction, when they have to choose between civilization and the scraggly grove. They've left the river, but Fred makes no motion for Kaylee to let go of her arm, so they walk like that, almost like the ladies you sometimes see out for strolls, almost like the stories she's heard of Companions, with their long dresses and dainty ways. In some ways, Fred is just like something out of a storybook.

In some ways she is different, and when they are halfway to town, she turns aside suddenly and walks to a certain patch of almost-dead grass, staring at the dirt. "I thought I saw..." and she falls silent.

"What was it?"

"Something I haven't seen in -- now I can't remember." Fred laughs, a little confusedly. She stares at a patch of earth that looks just like any other. "I'm sure it was important, but it's gone. Animal tracks...?" 

Fred is lost to Kaylee, sinking in the quicksand of her thoughts. Kaylee pulls her out with, "I feel like that sometimes. You need to clear your head. Will you sing for me?"

"I'd better not." Another gear that doesn't click with any others: Fred can't sing. "Let's go back." 

They walk, Kaylee a little ahead, half-skipping and careful not to look anywhere near the sun. It will be dark sooner than she'd like, and then Fred will send her back across the prairie and walk back to the cabin by herself. If she doesn't look skyward, it might stay light a little longer.

"I don't know," Fred says. "I suppose I ought to know, since I know so much about -- about flowers, and about stories, and about survival, and all sorts of silly things I don't know why on Earth -- that-was -- anyone would need to know about, but I don't know why I'm here. I mean, I know. I grew up there, and was taught by -- I remember. When I try to think too hard about it, though, it goes away. It feels like the memories aren't in place right, like everything's all jumbled up inside my head and if I try to straighten it out it just gets more twisted. Does that make sense?"

Kaylee is by her side now, and nods slowly, absorbing.

"I think it's something that was done to me, but I can't imagine who. I won't say anything bad about the Alliance, but sometimes I wonder -- I wonder who did it to me." She's silent, but only for a second. "It's good to have you here, Kaylee. I don't know what I'd do if you hadn't come and found me. Probably driven myself crazy sitting in my log cabin counting bugs on the wall."

"I don't think you would have. You'd've found the town, and someone would've taken you in, for sure. You should come up to town one day when there's a market. It's real sweet, lots of good food." She's been urging this on Fred almost since they met, but Fred turns skittish when Kaylee mentions other people.

Fred doesn't ignore her, exactly, but talks at a tangent to her advice. In her mind Kaylee sketches the picture Fred drew her, with shapes and lines and all their names -- angle, hypotenuse, tangent. These are some of the foreign words that fill the papers in her trunk.

"I think I came from earth-that-was. I guess that couldn't be be right, since it hasn't actually been a _place_ for hundreds of years, but that's what seems right to me. Things sometimes just don't click right, until I look at them the wrong way, through the wrong end of a telescope. Then they make sense, but it's the wrong kind of sense. Things that can't be -- they can't have _done that_ to me. They wouldn't."

Fred makes no objection when Kaylee slips an arm through hers.

"You aren't afraid of anything, are you?"

"Mountain lions," says Kaylee. "Alliance takin' the shop, and Browncoats messin' up the town, but nothing else. There's not much to be scared of 'round here."

"I'm scared of what I'll find if I go through my papers," Fred tells her, almost in a whisper. "Afraid of what they did to me, afraid of what Wes...." She stops, but suddenly something changes. She tears her arm away from Kaylee's; she holds herself stiffly and Kaylee realizes, after a second, that her arm aches where Fred touched it. "This is unacceptable," Fred says, and Kaylee is suddenly, intimately aware of what it means to be afraid. She steps out of Fred's reach, but isn't running, not yet. She looks at Fred anxiously, watches her stare at her hands, the coat that's still wrapped tightly around her chest. There's something wrong with her eyes. They -- they look like they're _cracking_ , like tiny streaks of blue lightening have unburied themselves.

"Fred, what's wrong?"

"We will return to the house. We will burn the spells and bury the devices that have trapped me. Then, I will return to his time and destroy him."

"Who -- Fred, who's _he_?"

Fred holds up a hand and Kaylee backs further away. "Your speech is irksome. Cease."

Something is wrong; she starts running because it's the only thing she can think of to do. Something in the cabin, something in Fred's trunk. She knows it's there. If she can find it, find a way to bring Fred back -- because whoever the woman is she's running away from, that's not Fred and never could be -- 

"Stop." Fred is breathless and her hand on Kaylee's shoulder is as gentle as always, as tender as ever. "We need -- we need to get back to the cabin right away. I remember -- I remember everything, but I won't last long. You've got to bind the memories again. If I remember, then -- I have a horrible headache but you need to listen very carefully." Kaylee could not imagine doing anything else. "I need you to go back to the cabin and find -- a piece of paper. It should have words written on it, an incantation, a spell."

"A witch's spell?" The world is suddenly strange; even the sky looks eerie in its twilight.

"That's not important! Just find it, and then read it aloud, and keep on reading it until you find me again."

"Then what?"

"I won't remember anymore." Fred says the words the way a dying man would say _and then I'll be in heaven_. "I can't remember."

"But -- Fred, what do you remember? What is it? How did you come here?"

"It's too long a story. Aren't you listening? There isn't any time! She's getting stronger every minute you're standing here, so go! Run!" And Kaylee runs.

She knows it's the right piece of paper because it burns her fingers when she touches it. She tingles with relief and fear as she starts to say the words, and then suddenly it feels like the words are saying her. They're coming from a place that isn't her mouth. The closest she's been to this is when she feels a machine humming under her hand and knows with her fingers what makes it whirr, but this is stronger and more frightening. She says the words almost in a trance as she walks back to Fred; says them over Fred, who's lying on the ground, looking pale.

Neither one of them will be home tonight. She wishes she'd thought to bring a blanket for Fred, who's shivering, but she wasn't thinking at all when she left the cabin, so she wraps her own self around Fred to keep her warm. She doesn't think she could ever sleep, her heart is beating so fast and Fred's so slow, but finally she does; the next thing she sees is the deep pink of dawn.

"Kaylee?" Fred's voice is soft. Her eyes are rich brown; Kaylee doesn't know how she imagined them blue. "What are we doing in the middle of the prairie?"

Kaylee stares at her. I won't remember anymore. I can't remember.

"We stayed out too late and got tired. I think we only meant to sleep a little, but look." She laughs towards the sunrise.

"Oh..." Fred's voice has again taken on the fuzzy, half-remembering quality that will always make Kaylee's heart twist in fear.

"Let's get home. Momma'll make us breakfast."

For the first time, Fred doesn't flinch at the suggestion of seeking companionship. She just nods and reaches for Kaylee's hand, and Kaylee's stomach feels strange when she squeezes Fred's fingers, like she'll never forget the hard, metallic sound of Fred's voice when she almost remembered. But she buries the thought, maybe the same place Fred buries her memories, a hard to reach place in the bottom of her mind, and she feels almost easy about one hand crossed over her body, holding Fred's hand, and one arm wrapped tightly across Fred's back, keeping her as close as she can. If she can't tell Fred what _was_ , she can always teach her what _is_ : buckwheat pancakes for breakfast, swimming in the Storra, how to lie on your back with your eyes open, watching the clouds.


End file.
